


The Piper

by salamanderinspace



Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: Abuse, Cruelty, Other, animal cruelty, parent/child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-30
Updated: 2015-05-30
Packaged: 2018-04-01 23:48:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4039327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salamanderinspace/pseuds/salamanderinspace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Something about the noise brings rats. The subharmonic groans of pipes and pistons tickle their tiny senses in a way that humans can not perceive. Like the pied piper, this space lures them.</p><p>Like she lures him."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Piper

It is a place he does not go.

It is a tangle in the bowel of the ship, a mechanical mess of copper and bronze piping. A boiler deep, deep beneath the engines. Vents open in to cool compression. Wind whines through. It is a land of infinite moaning.

Something about the noise brings rats. The subharmonic groans of pipes and pistons tickle their tiny senses in a way that humans can not perceive. Like the pied piper, this space lures them.

Like she lures him.

Seraphi stands in the small dark room. One day, Balem Abrasax will comb the wares of artisans to unabashedly style himself after this dark room. Rats trickle around Seraphi's toes, caught in the undulating and oppressive tone of starship viscera. One day, a long time in the future, Balem will hire the rat splice Chicanery Night as his Manager of Affairs--an act of homage to the recollection of this mass hypnosis.

But today. Today is rite to preempt all reenactments.

Balem asks after the recent harvest. He has not seen his mother since she went to reap her latest crop. When she goes, she leaves behind sims to look out with her eyes; Balem has never once been alone. He spells out soft soliloquies in his alcazar because he knows she is watching. She sees everything. She knows everything. She's very mysterious. She chooses to be away.

"You can come next time," she promises. "Now come to me." She leans against a rusted old console, tracing mandala into the dust with a painted nail. He goes to her. She turns away from him.

Her dress has a liquid texture, the color of garnets. The bodice pours down her and spreads, pooling in a wide radius. Balem is old enough to think she looks like wine tastes. He is not old enough yet to think of blood.

Seraphi's back and shoulders are bare. She lifts the bottom of her train, and plucks something from beside her shoe. It is a rat, eel-writhing and filthy. All the rats look the same to Balem: chittering, unwashed, desperate. Gripping the neck, she raises the creature into a weak trickle of sick, fluorescent light. Balem watches wrath gleam red behind beady eyes. There is a moment, as his mother places the beast upon the console, when Balem swears he can see oblivion fall from the rodent's face, replaced by a momentary consciousness. It is temporarily aware of the physics of its current situation. 

It hates to be caught--but it is too stupid to bite.  
It hates to be caught--but it is only just learning what that means.  
It hates to be caught--but it was always caught. It was never free at all.

"Mother, what are you…?" His whisper dies in the whine of the air through the piping. He watches her press the fragment of fur into the console surface. She is squeezing it. She is squeezing it harder.

"It is our right," she answers. "And it is our duty. They need us and we need them. Do you see?"

Balem does not care to see. He looks at the steam pipes; they twist like worms in foil, writhing like tinsel maggots. Low, the mellifluous rushing of machinery sounds against tempered walls. An accompaniment joins. The rat is screaming, hissing. Terror-squeals spit through the steady pressure of Seraphi's fingers. 

"I asked you a question, Balem. Do you see it?"

Balem turns to look. "Mother, stop," he whispers.

The creature flails. It has folded its ears back into it's head, and pealed its eyes open, raw and glistening. It has no breath left. It twitches. It twists and twirls, and she nearly cannot hold it--her elbow is bent, firm and steady--

Balem watches Seraphi slam her hand against the console, once, hard. The rat is still. It will never run away. 

"Now you," she says. Her fingers open. "Do it. You are ready."

Balem inhales and his heart stammers. Her eyes are bleeding into him. His veins throb. His body is pounding out a prolific rhythm. She says he is ready and so he is. He lays a trap. He drops his cape over an air vent and the mark wanders in, disoriented, almost willing. The rat is albino--female, quartz-white as salt. He seizes her and she tries to bite. Balem is dutiful. He presses the creature against the console and holds it gently.

But he _can't._

"You mean more than they do," Seraphi says. "You have to show them." Seraphi glows like a lantern--that is, a shade over a glowing thing, a mask set upon a bulb. Her gaze is too bright to be anything but a landscape, a destination. A destination he is approaching, at long last.

"Hold me, and I will do it," Balem gasps. His mother sweeps around to stand behind him, arms on either side of his. He squeezes the rat. It tries to bite. He squeezes harder.

"How does it feel?" she murmurs, snaking a hand over his chest. She squeezes him, a little.

"Fine," he lies. Tears fill his eyes. "Dirty."

"It doesn't feel fine," she hisses to his ear. Hot, like a beam of sun, and red like the gleam of fire. "It shouldn't feel dirty." 

He can feel her small frame pressing against his back. She slides her hand down the front of him.

"Mother," he whispers, "what are you doing?"

"I am preparing you for life, my special one," she murmurs. His gaze fades dark into the maggot ceiling. His grip tightens, as does hers; she is holding him close and touching him hard. He tells himself that he has a right--that she has a right--that any beast has any right to eat when it is hungry, to fight when it feels powerless. In a rush of adrenaline, his fingers close. He feels the last rattle of air spurt from the thing in his hand. There is a spastic twitch--a termination into limp and lifeless infinity. He sighs. She pulls away.

"I can go with you, next time?" he asks. "For the harvest?"

"You can go anywhere you care to," she says. "And I will go with you."


End file.
